Shang-yi Chiang earned his Bachelor of Science degree from National Taiwan University in 1968, his Master of Science degree from Princeton University in 1970, and his Doctorate from Stanford University in 1974, all in electrical engineering. After completing his studies, he worked at ITT Corporation, Texas Instruments, and Hewlett-Packard. He went to Taiwan in 1997 to serve as TSMC’s Vice President of Research and Development, Senior Vice President of R&D as well as Executive Vice President and Co-Chief Operating Officer before announcing his retirement in October of 2013.

During Shang-yi’s 40-year career in the semiconductor industry, he has contributed to the research and development of CMOS, NMOS, Bipolar, DMOS, SOS, SOI, GaAs lasers, LED, E-Beam lithography, and silicon solar cells. At TSMC, his R&D team set milestones in semiconductor technology in the 0.25 micron, 0.18 micron, 0.15 micron, 0.13 micron, 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, and 28nm generations, and continue to extend to the 20nm, 16nm FinFET, and 10nm generations. Under his leadership, TSMC rose to become a semiconductor technology leader with its R&D organization growing from 148 to 4,000 people, while annual R&D spending rising from $80 million to $1.6 billion.

Shang-yi won some awards and honors. In 2001, he was chosen as one of 50 “Stars of Asia” by Businessweek Magazine, together with then Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Junichiro Koizumi and the mayor of Seoul Mr. Lee Myung-bak. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).